


Breathe In Breathe Out

by fizzyblogic (phizzle)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: contrelamontre, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-19
Updated: 2010-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phizzle/pseuds/fizzyblogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In college, Andy tries out meditation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe In Breathe Out

**Author's Note:**

> Hints of future Dean/Andy, but not so much I'd tag it so.

Andy met Robbie in his English class, three weeks into the semester. Robbie was cute, he raised a point about the text that made half the class laugh, and when Andy smiled at him, Robbie smiled back.

Andy asked him if he wanted to go get some coffee, Robbie said he'd like that, and two coffee dates and one movie later, they were sitting on Robbie's bed, making out. It wasn't the first time Andy had kissed a guy, but it was definitely the first time he'd felt like this could maybe turn into a relationship.

They had sex later that night. Andy didn't stay over; Robbie's roommate came back and said he wanted to get some sleep, and from the way things were going that might have been a problem, so Andy put his clothes back on and said he'd see Robbie in class, that it was nice to meet Peter.

He had English class a couple days later, and Robbie smiled when he saw him, waved him over. They sat together, comparing notes. "You want to go get lunch?" Robbie asked, when the class was over.

They started hanging out after classes, meeting up at the half-way point when they were in different buildings. They had dinner together a few times, and pretty regular sex, and by the end of three weeks Andy was introducing Robbie to new people as "my boyfriend".

It was awesome. _Robbie_ was awesome, this calm, wise center of being. He was good to be around; he cracked jokes at the right time, gave killer neck rubs, and always knew where the nearest place to get coffee was.

When they'd been dating for two months, Robbie finally persuaded Andy to try out meditation. There was a circle he went to every week, and he was always so relaxed when he came back from it. Andy was starting to get stressed out — by school, by his well-meaning dad's questions about if he'd picked his major yet, by the few friends who'd turned out to be homophobic. He could do with some relaxation.

"I still can't believe you talked me into this," he said, as Robbie rang the doorbell of a very nice, very normal-looking door.

"Relax, it's not as kooky as it sounds. Well," Robbie tilted his head slightly, "maybe it kind of is. But come on, you'll love it once you get past feeling self-conscious. Just remember, everybody's here to meditate, nobody will be looking at you."

Andy exhaled. "Right. I'll be okay."

A short, blonde woman — probably a senior — opened the door. "Robbie! Is this Andy? You finally brought him?"

Robbie beamed and hugged her as he and Andy edged into the house. "I did. Andy, this is Marie. Marie, my boyfriend Andy."

"He's told us all about you. Come on through, nearly everyone's here."

The front room, where Marie led them, was big and lined with chairs. Armchairs, beanbag chairs, a small couch, and a full-sized couch, where a sophomore Andy had seen around campus was lying. Three of the chairs were filled. Andy and Robbie sat on the smaller couch.

"Hi everyone, this is Andy." Robbie pointed to him, and Andy waved. "Andy, this is Sarah," a tall black woman from Andy's French class folded into one of the beanbags, "Gary," a guy not much taller than Andy, who looked around junior age and was sitting on the beanbag next to Sarah, "Lewis," the sophomore on the couch, "and Helen," a woman who, Andy realised, was in a wheelchair. Parked between two armchairs, he hadn't seen the wheels.

"Hi," he said, smiling around at everybody. Marie came back in with a plate of cookies, and put them on the table in the middle of the room.

"We're just waiting on Tracey and Abby," she said, taking a place in one of the chairs next to Helen. "Then we can get started."

"So um." Andy cleared his throat, trying not to come off too nervous. "What do you guys do here? I mean — how does it work?"

"Marie leads the meditation, she'll take us into it," Lewis explained.

"She tells us the start of it, like — in a meadow, by a river, on a beach — and then we just follow the meditation on our own paths," Helen smiled.

"Then she brings us out of it at the end, and we each share what we saw," Robbie finished up.

"Oh. Okay, thanks." Andy leaned closer to Robbie and whispered, "I should have practiced with you first."

Robbie grinned slightly wolfishly, but before he could make the obvious innuendo, the doorbell rang again. Marie jumped up, there were voices in the hall, and then two women came into the room, smiling around at everybody and taking off their jackets.

"Hi," one of them said to Andy, "I'm Abby." She was pretty, and looked sort of familiar.

"Do we have math together?" Andy asked. "Oh — um, I'm Andy."

Abby squinted at him. "Hey yeah, I think we do." She took the other newcomer's hand and said, "This is my girlfriend, Tracey."

Andy waved. "Hi Tracey." Tracey waved back.

"Okay, now we're all here," Marie ushered Tracey and Abby into the remaining armchairs, "how was everyone's week?"

What followed was a half hour of the kind of conversation Andy had been having with various friends since he started college. Classes, assignments, roommate drama, professors with bizarre or boring teaching methods, the latest test grade. Everything was so … so _normal_. There were even cookies. Pretty excellent cookies, actually.

Robbie kept smiling at him. "See," he whispered, as Tracey and Lewis were talking about their Sociology assignment, "isn't it great here?"

Andy smiled back at him. "Not as bad as I'd thought," he admitted, quietly.

"Right," Marie clapped her hands together when the conversations were winding down, "why don't we get down to business?"

Suddenly, Andy was nervous again. Would she ask them all to hold hands? Would she put on a really deep voice?

She did neither. She picked up a remote for the stereo, clicked a couple of buttons, and some soft pipe music began playing. Everybody else started breathing deeply, so Andy followed suit. Marie's voice seemed to float across the room, soft as the music, oddly soothing. "Close your eyes," she instructed, and Andy instinctively obeyed. "Breathe deeply in … and now out. In … and now out. Feel yourself begin to relax, into the music, into your breathing, into the sound of my voice. Let all the worries of your life go. Relax your shoulders, just breathe out all of that tension. Feel yourself go quiet, and still."

Andy could hear his breathing, loud and even. He felt like he was floating slightly, almost like falling asleep. Marie's voice was so low, and calm. Andy relaxed, feeling like his awareness shrank until he was in the center of his body, just waiting.

"See all your troubles, all your tensions and worries, as a ball of silver light. Now let it go. Watch that ball float away into the air, dissolving as it goes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Let it all go as many times as you need, until it is gone."

Andy could see it, could actually see a ball of silver light in front of him. He thought about all the things he could put in there — _I'm so proud of you, son, what will you be studying?_; _I can't believe you're a faggot now, I thought you were cool_; _This needs to be in by Friday, if there's any questions you know where to find me_ — and he felt himself packing them all into this ball, until it was full, and then watching it float away. He pictured it like a balloon at the last second, and imagined a pin piercing it. The _pop_ almost startled him out of his trance, but then he filled another one, as Marie kept talking — "Breathe out, let it all go" — and that one floated up into the air and burst.

He felt better. A little lighter somehow, and he knew — this worked. It wasn't about some hoodoo witchdoctor crap, it was just finding a way to relax and let everything go. None of it really mattered, none of the worry he had, nothing — because he could let go of it and feel this good, this light, this relieved.

He realised he wasn't listening, so he tuned in again to hear Marie saying, "Now imagine you're in a garden. It's a beautiful garden, with low walls all around it. There are flowers on every side, and a path in the middle. There's a fountain. You're walking on the path, towards that fountain. See the bright colours of the petals, the leaves on the bushes. Hear the tinkle of the fountain. Breathe in the cool, crisp air. Feel a breeze on your face. It's warm. Keep walking towards that fountain." Her voice trailed off, or maybe Andy just tuned out again.

He was in the garden. He could see it, just like Marie said – bright reds and greens and yellows and blues, flowers of all different kinds, creeping plants and bushes on the walls. Roses grew in an arch, ivy twined around the base of the fountain. Two little birds were splashing in the water, drinking and fluttering, getting wet. He walked, unhurried, hearing the _crunch crunch_ of his feet on the stones of the path, feeling the warmth of the sun he couldn't see on his face. A cool breeze blew past his earlobe. He smiled, walking a little bit faster, past the fountain. There was a marble bench a little way along the path. When Andy saw it, he saw a man sitting on it, and he slowed down. There was a feeling about this man, like he wasn't supposed to see him yet, so Andy kept his distance. He kept looking back at him, though; he was wearing a green shirt over a black t-shirt, and he had on beat-up dark blue jeans, a leather jacket that had clearly seen better days, and boots. Andy couldn't see his face from where he was, but he could see the back of his head; short brown hair.

Andy hung back on the path, walking to the fountain. He could still feel the sun, the breeze, hear the gravel and the birds, but he could taste something … strange. Tangy, unpleasant. Like gunpowder and something else, and no matter how many times he tried to turn back to the fountain, he kept turning and walking towards that bench.

Finally, he got sick of the impending sense of doom or whatever that taste was. He stopped going back to the fountain, walked right up to the bench, and stood in front of it. His whole body felt like it shouldn't be here, and the half-formed words _not yet not yet_ flitted across the sky.

The man on the bench looked up. He was beautiful — big green eyes, a fantastic mouth, just enough stubble, a hint of a bad boy with a golden heart; someone Andy would _never_ admit was exactly his type. Andy swallowed. The look on this guy's face was something he hadn't seen in anyone before, something hard, like a man who faces horrors. But he lifted his beautiful face up to Andy, and he smiled, and he said, "Hi."

The garden vanished. Andy could feel himself in the center of his chest again, and Marie's voice gently broke in. Slowly increasing in volume, she said, "Now leave the garden, walking down the path back into this room. Breathe in … breathe out … come back to us." Then she counted backward from ten, and Andy opened his eyes when she got to three.

Everyone stretched, smiled, looked utterly relaxed. Andy felt unsettled, but relaxed at the same time. "So," Marie smiled round at them, "what did you see?"

Tracey spoke first, and they went around the circle. Everybody else had seen their garden, met somebody or sat for a while. Andy began to feel less weird. Lewis said he'd seen a dog, who had taken him out of the garden and into a lake. Robbie had met his spirit guide, a man named Donaldson, who had shown him a bridge and spoken to him of decisions.

Then it was Andy's turn. "Uh," he cleared his throat, "I saw the garden. There were birds, playing in the fountain. Like in a cartoon," he half-laughed. "Then there was … this guy, sitting on a bench. I don't know who he was. It felt like — I don't know, like he was significant. He had —" Andy frowned, the memory of it fading. "I can't remember what he looked like, now. All he said was hi."

"You may have just met your spirit guide," Marie beamed at him, but Andy knew he hadn't. He didn't say anything, didn't know how he knew either, but he just _knew_ that whoever he'd seen wasn't a spirit. Wasn't anyone he knew.

Not yet, anyway.


End file.
